Dragons of Winter Noght by Weis, Margaret

“I said down!” the old man shouted furiously, waving his staff menacingly at the hole below him.

There was a slurping sound and both of them were sucked into the hole so rapidly that Fizban’s hat flew off. It’s just like the hat he lost in the red dragon’s lair, Tas thought. It was bent and shapeless, and apparently possessed of a mind of its own. Fizban made a wild grab for it, but missed. The hat, however, floated down after them, about fifty feet above.

Tasslehoff peered down, fascinated, and started to ask a question, but Fizban shushed him. Gripping his staff, the old mage began whispering to himself, making an odd sign in the air.

Laurana opened her eyes. She was lying on a cold stone bench, staring at a black, glistening ceiling. She had no idea where she was. Then memory returned. Silvara!

Sitting up swiftly, she flashed a glance around the room. Flint was groaning and rubbing his neck. Theros blinked and looked around, puzzled. Gilthanas, already an his feet, stood at the end of Huma’s tomb, gazing down at something by the door. As Laurana walked over to him, he turned around. Putting his finger to his lips, he nodded in the direction of the doorway.

Silvara sat there, her head in her arms, sobbing bitterly.

Laurana hesitated, the angry words on her lips dying. This certainly wasn’t what she had expected. What had she expected? she asked herself. Never to wake again, most likely. There had to be an explanation. She started forward.

“Silvara-” she began.

The girl leaped up, her tear-stained face white with fear.

“What are you doing awake? How did you free yourself from my spell?” she gasped, falling back against the wall.

“Never mind that!” Laurana answered, though she hadn’t any idea how she had wakened. “Tell us-”

“It was my doing!” announced a deep voice, Laurana and the rest turned around to see a white-bearded old man in mouse-colored robes rise up solemnly out of the hole in the floor.

“Fizban!” whispered Laurana in disbelief.

There was a dunk and a thud. Flint toppled over in a dead faint. No one even looked at him. They simply stared at the old mage in awe. Then, with a shrill shriek, Silvara flung herself flat on the cold stone floor, shivering and whimpering softly.

Ignoring the stares of the others, Fizban walked across the floor of the tomb, past the bier, past the comatose dwarf, to come to Silvara. Behind him, Tasslehoff scrambled up out of the hole.

“Look who I found” the kender said proudly. “Fizban! And I flew, Laurana, I jumped into the hole and just flew straight up into the air. And there’s a painting up there with gold dragons, and then Fizban sat up and yelled at me and-I must admit I felt really queer there for a while. My voice was gone and . . . what happened to Flint?”

“Hush, Tas,” Laurana said weakly, her eyes on Fizban. Kneeling down, he shook the Wilder elfmaid.

“Silvara, what have you done?” Fizban asked sternly.

Laurana thought then that perhaps she had made a mistake-this must be some other old man dressed in the old magician’s clothes. This stern-faced, powerful man was certainly not the befuddled old mage she remembered. But no, she’d recognize that face anywhere, to say nothing of the hat!

Watching the two of them-Silvara and Fizban-before her, Laurana felt great and awesome power like silent thunder surging between the two. She had a terrible longing to run out of this place and keep running until she dropped with exhaustion. But she couldn’t move. She could only stare.

“What have you done, Silvara?” Fizban demanded. “You have broken your oath!”

“No!” The girl moaned, writhing on the ground at the old mage’s feet. “No, I haven’t. Not yet-”

“You have walked the world in another body, meddling in the affairs of men. That alone would be sufficient. But you brought them here!”

Silvara’s tear-stained face was twisted in anguish. Laurana felt her own tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks.

“All right then!” Silvara cried defiantly. “I broke my oath, or at least I intended to. I brought them here. I had to! I’ve seen the misery and the suffering. Besides”-her voice fell, her eyes stared far away-“they had an orb . . .”